Rev Sci Scores Gannett -- Tacoda Says It's not a Loss

Today Revenue Science announced it will enable behavioral ad targeting across all of Gannett’s paper and local TV station sites, including USAToday.com. The Rev Sci technology will allow the publisher to target ads to pre-defined audience categories as well as customized segments.

When my fellow reporter, Zach, and I discussed the win, we wondered, was Tacoda’s system, which Gannett has used to serve behavioral ads on its USAToday site, not up to snuff for use across all of Gannett’s sites?

I rang up Tacoda’s chairman Dave Morgan, and told him it had come to my attention that they’d lost the Gannett account. Well, he said, “We already put an end to the life of [Tacoda’s publisher site-side targeting] product.” That’s what Gannett has used to serve behaviorally-targeted ads on USAToday.com. Although some sites continue to target ads through the publisher-side system, Morgan said, the firm “hasn’t actively sold it since October.”

The focus for Tacoda seems to be exclusively its Audience Network, a behavioral targeting network of about 4,000 Web sites.